On Android’s Market Share

Ever since Android was announced by Google a while back, Linux geeks everywhere have been hoping it would take a chunk out of the iPhone market. Though Android hasn’t really taken off as expected, hopes have been renewed recently with projections that the mobile OS would outpace the iPhone in the next year or two, especially with an armada of new phones intending to run it out of the box.

Personally, I doubt that Android will really dent the iPhone market. That’s not to say I don’t think it won’t be popular, I just think it will cut into a different mobile OS: Windows Mobile. Android and the iPhone do not really compete in the same arenas. The iPhone is a high-performance device with some core (limited) functionality. Android, however, is more of an all-purpose OS, as demonstrated by the diversity of hardware it can run on. To date, the all-purpose mobile OS has been Windows Mobile. In fact, it’s so all-purpose that the mobile checkout devices used by sales reps in Apple Stores run Windows Mobile.

As Android takes off, I’m guessing that Windows Mobile’s days are numbered. I haven’t heard anything about it in some time, and media share sometimes counts for more than market share. After all, if you looked around, would you guess that only 1 in 10 people use a Mac?

Picture Mail for Sprint’s HTC Mogul(6800)

At 5:01 PM EST today I recieved a text message from Sprint on my phone.

SPRINTFREEMSG: Picture Mail is now available for your device at http://softwarestore.sprint.com/wap under the Free/Demo section. Click Go to get it now.

This is great news!  This feature has been too long been missing from these “more powerful” Windows Mobile phones.

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